Unseen Things Above (2 page)

Come with me now to a church in Lindford. Not the parish church (where Father Dominic now serves), but one nearby with a Gothic revival building of the type that looks as though it might soon be cut loose by the evil archdeacon, Matt the Knife, and turned into a supermarket. Or more likely a nightclub called Holy Joe's. It is in the clubbing district, such as it is, of Lindford. Beside the church is that narrow alley where, last year – you may remember the incident – two men picked on the wrong faggot. A CCTV camera now keeps watch. Every Friday and Saturday night the church pitches its gazebo in the little yard behind the railings, and from here the street pastors operate, dispensing love, hot chocolate and flip-flops to the lost souls of Lindford.

We will pop in now and see what's going on in St James' Church this Low Sunday morning. The first thing you will spot is the lack of pews. The Victorian Society took a tonking here, all right. There are cheerful banners. Someone plays thoughtful music on an electric piano. Can this be another Evangelical stronghold? By no means! This is an inclusive church, my friends, where God is mother and father of all, in the
commonwealth
not the kingdom of heaven. It is Bishop Bob's kind of a place. Change from the bottom up, not the top down. They do good work here in their rainbowy way.

Veronica wears a simple cassock alb and Peruvian stole in bright colours. Lent is now over, so she has laid aside her equal marriage campaigning rainbow dog collar. She is not the incumbent, she's a university chaplain. Here comes Geoff the vicar now. It's a baptism, so he's wearing a stole with Noah's ark animals on. I believe somebody made it from upholstery fabric. It would cover a nursery chair very nicely. The baptism will move seamlessly into the Annual Parochial Church Meeting (getting in before the end of April) and be followed by a shared lunch.

I don't suppose you want to stay for a church AGM, do you? No. Let us ‘risk the hostile stare', and tiptoe back out as the congregation stands to sing ‘Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?' (tune: Kelvingrove).

A glimpse of Veronica is all I vouchsafe you this week, dear reader. Instead, I will whisk you back to the Close and into the study of the Revd Giles Littlechild, the canon precentor. The Littlechilds have just returned from holiday in Heidelberg, visiting in-laws and older son (Gap Yah). Giles has read somewhere that you should do one thing each day that scares you. Opening his work emails surely qualifies!

He scrolls through, delicately, like a bomb disposal expert. Excellent. Nothing too dire. But then a new email pings in.

Oh, God. A last-minute application for the post of tenor lay clerk. They can't
not
interview him, can they? And then they'll have to appoint him, because he'll be the best.

Lord have mercy! Frankly, Giles would rather have a tone-deaf moose on the back row of
dec
than Freddie May.

Chapter 2

W
hy hadn't they worded the advertisement more carefully?
The successful candidate will not be hell on wheels.
Lindchester Cathedral's music department had been complacent. It had placed its trust in Mr May's legendary powers of self-sabotage. To be sure, the application bore signs of having been submitted in panic, but it had arrived with two whole hours to spare. What was wrong with Exeter? Or Truro? thought Giles. Or Christchurch New Zealand? Why couldn't you apply for
those
when they came up, you little horror?

Oh, well. Giles supposed it was inevitable that Freddie would be drawn back to the place where he was known and loved, and where that little hiatus in his CV (‘gap year' indeed!) required no mumbled explanation. And who could say, perhaps the stint as choral scholar in Barchester had steadied him? Of course it had. No awful rumours had reached Lindchester. If one discounted getting banned from Tesco Extra for skateboarding down the travelator. And the midnight Buff Run incident. But streaking round the Close was a historic tradition for choral scholars! Pure bad luck to collide with the precentor's wife.

Giles skimmed the references. Look at that: Freddie had been gainfully employed as a cocktail waiter for the last six months. ‘Cheerful.' (Stoned.) ‘Reliable.' (Consistently stoned.) His boss at the Cuba Club had ‘absolutely no hesitation in recommending Frederick for the position he was applying for'. Neither had the director of music at Barchester Cathedral.
Take him! Someone, anyone! I'll pay you!
screamed the subtext. Or was Giles just imagining that?

‘Darling, some lovely news!' he called.

Ulrika appeared in the doorway with the bottle of Mosel she was opening (decent stuff, not the crep they exported to the ignorant Brits). ‘What?'

‘Our beloved Frederick has applied for the lay clerk post after all!'

I will not enlarge your vocabulary of German profanities by recording her reply.

How on earth had Freddie mastered his terror of forms sufficiently to fill in the application? The answer is not far to seek. It is Monday morning. Miss Blatherwick is hanging up the birdfeeder she has just refilled. The finches rely on her this time of year, with young to feed and no ripe seeds in the hedges and fields yet. Ironic that spring should be the season of starvation. She ought to have done this yesterday really, but it was getting dark by the time she returned from her little mission to Barchester. Couldn't really trust herself in poor light. Balance not what it was.

Amadeus the cathedral cat, sleek on his diet of donated Sheba and goldfinches, watches from the top of the wall. Miss Blatherwick gets carefully down from her stool. She gives Amadeus the look that quelled generations of naughty choristers. He flicks his tail and gazes back, all innocence. She can't stand guard for ever.

This being Monday, the canons have gathered for their weekly meeting, which for historic reasons is referred to as ‘Canons' Breakfast'. Dean Marion is away on a conference in Derby with her fellow deans. Derby lies beyond the borders of the diocese, so an indistinct idea must suffice that they are conferring on matters germane to the office and work of a dean in God's Church. In her absence, the meeting is taking place at the precentor's house, and the precentor is chairing, because he is the first canon. Let's slip in behind the latecomer (Mr Happy, the canon chancellor) and eavesdrop on the mice at play.

‘To be honest, it's a right chuffing mare.'

I am sorry to disappoint the reader, but this was not our friend the archdeacon speaking.

‘We're up to our axles in the whole interregnum malarkey, and now the volunteers are going tits up on us,' continued Philip, the canon treasurer. He had his feet up on the precentor's dining-room table. His chair was tilted at a rakish angle, as was the precentor's son's pork pie hat, which was perched on his head.

The precentor handed him a mug of coffee. ‘Thou look'st like antichrist in that lewd hat.'

‘You're conflating antichrist and archdeacon, there,' said the chancellor. His voice quavered.

‘Well, to be fair, I
am
the chuffing arch-antichrist of Lindchester, so you can do one, you nob.' Satisfied that Mr Happy was now helpless with mirth, the treasurer removed the hat from his head and his feet from the table.

The precentor's phone buzzed. ‘Ha! Text from Mrs Dean. She hopes our meeting goes well, and they're off on a coach trip to Chatsworth House,' he said. ‘Oh, that's nice. The deans of the Church of England are off on a jolly, while the lowly canons keep the show on the road.'

‘Just think,' said the chancellor. ‘If the coach driver misjudges a bend and they all go over a precipice, the archbishops' appointments secretary is going to have a very busy year.'

His colleagues both stared at him.

‘You have a ghoulish imagination, Father,' said Giles. ‘I like you!'

‘Well, gentlemen, we have a lot to get through,' chided Philip in Marion's voice. ‘Let's make a start, shall we?'

And so the business commenced. Visitor donations, coach parking facilities, volunteers' job descriptions, major art exhibition planned, big service to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first women priests in Lindchester diocese, rewiring of properties in Vicars' Yard, fresh wave of allegations involving the Choristers' School in the 1970s, and (on a happier note) the successful fundraising effort to cover Amadeus the cathedral cat's vet bill!

‘So, my suggestion is this,' said Philip, ‘that we produce a document outlining the grave danger to Amadeus from falling masonry if the restoration work on the spire is not undertaken immediately. We'll have the 7.8 million in two weeks.'

‘Get the cathedral architect on to it at once,' said Giles.

‘Don't forget FAC,' said the chancellor.

‘FAC!' shouted the precentor. ‘Great facking FAC, man!'

The Fabric Advisory Committee's acronym was among chapter's favoured expletives. We will tiptoe away as the treasurer launches into his cathedral architect impersonation and the chancellor weeps with helpless laughter again. I won't apologize for their behaviour. It is gallows humour. If clergy could not assemble now and then to ridicule their congregations, colleagues and senior staff and generally make light of their lot, I doubt they would survive.

I am now going to introduce another new character. I know, I know. You are impatient to hear about the archdeacon and Jane. But I think you will like Pedro. He's out for a walk with our lovely friend Father Wendy. Let's leap forward now to Wednesday morning, and join them on the banks of the Linden.

‘Well, Pedro, isn't this a lovely morning?'

Pedro makes no reply.

‘Look! Red campion – not to be confused with ragged robin, which is this one here. And that's stitchwort. Isn't the may blossom glorious?' Wendy stops and takes in a lungful. ‘We could cast a clout, if we felt like it, boy.' She unzips her puffy gilet as a token.

Pedro is wearing a jacket. He is also wearing a muzzle. Wendy still isn't sure how he'll behave round other dogs. It's been less than a week. He's in a harness, because she was warned about his Houdini-like escapes from collars to chase small furry things. He's still fast, even on three legs.

‘Listen! Willow warbler.'

Pedro walks on. So different from Lulu. But she will get used to this lurching silky gait. This quivering shyness. And Pedro will get used to her plodding, her non-stop nature documentary and tuneless singing.

Glad that I live am I,

That the sky is blue.

Glad for the country lanes

And the fall of dew.

And she
is
glad! ‘Twenty years, Pedro. Can you believe it? At Petertide I'll have been a priest twenty years! Oh, and by the way, this Saturday I'm off to London to the big celebration in St Paul's, so it'll be Doug taking you for your walk, all right? You like Doug, don't you? Yes, you like Doug.' She bends down and massages the greyhound's neck and ears.

Pedro does not know yet that he is safe; that from now on he will be loved lavishly and unconditionally.

Who else is glad to be alive this spring morning? Why, Dr Jane Rossiter! Here she is, waiting for the lift in the ground floor of the Fergus Abernathy building. She might get into the lift, begin her ride up to the sixth floor, only for the cable to shear off. The lift will then plunge down the shaft in a few endless seconds of screaming terror, followed by a blaze of mangled pain, then death. So yes, because the alternative would be worse, Dr Rossiter is glad to be alive.

Happily, she arrives safely at her office door and rummages in her satchel for her keys. Jane was forced to come in by train today because the car's out of commission. Why are keys so hard to find? She puts down the bunch of papers and bulging files (Poundstretcher, a paperless university! my bottom) and has a proper hunt. Why do handbags have so many effing compartments? She hunts in her pockets. She hunts in her bag again. She hunts in the files. In her bag. Files. Bag pockets files. Now what? Punch door. Set fire to building.

Because the fecking keys are at home.

Which means she'll have to go back down to security and sign out the spare set. And now, joy! Another hot flush. She rips off her jacket with a snarl and blots her face with it. Then she gathers up her stuff and stomps back to the lift, scanning round for someone to blame.

Doors closing!
says the voice primly. Jane shuts her eyes and leans her head back against the lift wall. She can feel the cold film of sweat on her face, but she's taken a vow never to fan herself. Kill people, possibly; but never fan herself. So this is the end of project fertility, is it? Hoorah. Do I get my pre-adolescent body back? Do I get to be lean and lithe again? Will I be able to shin up trees and run naked without my arms folded? No? So what do I get? A beard, you say? Yeah, thanks for that, Nature.

The lift stops at Floor 3 and some undergraduates get in with their phones and tattoos and water bottles and hangovers and deadlines. Jane doesn't kill them. She's decided to kill the archdeacon instead. For not sorting her car out for her. He offered to sort her car out, but she informed him that she'd been looking after a car all by herself for over thirty years, thank you very much, so he can stop bloody patronizing her.

Oh, Jane! Why are you being beastly to the poor archdeacon? Is he not devoted to you? Was he not, only last night, steadily insisting that yes, he
does
want to come with you to New Zealand at the end of the summer term, to tie the knot? You can go ahead, crack on with the paperwork, book the tickets, everything's peachy.

But
is
everything peachy, though? This is what Jane is wondering as she crosses the foyer to get the spare keys. She's not a stupid woman. She worked out many years ago how to decode what men actually mean when they say something: they actually mean
what they say
. That's the secret. Women are from Venus, men are from Ronseal. So why is she fretting that he's got cold feet? Was there ever a sweeter, more uncomplicated bloke in the world? Maybe hormones are doing her head in. She should probably go home and wash down a handful of black cohosh with some Jack Daniels and get a grip. Sort it, go to New Zealand, return as civil partners and move in together at last. Stop having to creep about being
discreet
the whole fecking time.